THE THING Prequel will Feature Norwegian Actors Speaking Norwegian

Movie The Thing by Eli Reyes

In January, we posted a casting call that had been released for Universal's prequel to John Carpenter's classic sci-fi horror film The Thing, which gave character details on the three leads and six supporting roles. The call required that certain roles were only being cast for actors who are able to speak Norwegian, and one was strictly for Scandinavian actors only. So it's no real surprise that, like the authenticity displayed in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and with "an eye toward helping the film play overseas," the LA Times reports that the cast of The Thing prequel...

...is populated with actors from Australia, England, Canada and Norway. In fact, a majority of the Norwegian scientists in the film are played by Norwegian actors, who will play their scenes in Norwegian, with English subtitles.

I absolutely love that they are going that route! io9 respectfully cringes at the idea, but this just shows me that if they're taking this much care with the casting and dialogue, likely the rest of the film will be handled with respect for the original... hopefully. 

It was also revealed in the piece, that Zack Snyder is the one who steered Universal towards hiring Dutch commercial director Matthijs Van Heijningen. I'm not completely sold on him yet, though producer Eric Newman is quick to point out about commercial directors have made great transitions into features in the past:

Whether its Ridley Scott or David Fincher or Spike Jonze, these guys are trained to tell stories without words, which is great training for a genre film. It's like they all came out of silent movies.

The 1982 original starred Kurt Russell, but they're going with a female lead for the prequel. They've got a great cast so far, with familiar but not studio bankable stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Live Free: Die Hard) taking the lead role, and Joel Edgerton, who was in Ned Kelly and King Arthur, and was one of the stars of my favorite film at Sundance, Animal Kingdom, playing a mercenary helicopter pilot.

The original script was penned by Ronald Moore, while Eric Heisserer (A Nightmare on Elm Street remake) was brought in to do some major re-writes, and takes place before the original alien attack on the American snow base.

Producer Marc Abraham explained:

We go back to that original Norwegian camp and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred.

Universal may have had some occasional hits last year, with Fast & Furious and Couples Retreat, but they are in desperate need of a hit after a string of flops with Duplicity, State of Play and Land of the Lost in the first half of 2009, and The Wolfman remake and the high-budgeted Green Zone under performing at the box-office this year.

The Thing prequel is being budgeted more modestly than the reported $100 million + budgets of Wolfman and Green Zone, with a $38 million production budget, going mostly towards its special effects.

Falling a couple of weeks behind it's aim for a March 5th start date, The Thing begins filming next week in Toronto.

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